The
Seattle Empire Laundry Building NominationThis Nomination
was submitted April 2, 1998 and accepted by the Seattle Landmarks Board on
April 23, 1998.

Along with a thirty-piece
set of full color, indexed photographic views of all 1998 building elevations
and major interior spaces, eleven copies of a filmed tour of the building on
VHS cassettes, a set of twelve historic photos, letters of endorsement from
local, regional and national supporters, as well as the audiotaped proceedings
of two separate official presentations (nomination and designation), the following
submission is on file as a matter of public record at the City of Seattle Landmarks
Preservation Board.

Interested parties are encouraged
view any or all of these materials by contacting the Board at 700 Third Ave (4th
Floor), Seattle, WA 98104 USA; 206-684-0228.

•
Building description

The
Seattle Empire Laundry building (currently known as “66 Bell”) was built in
1913 by Ira S. Harding. The building was commissioned by David Codding Keeney,
the owner-founder of the Seattle Empire Laundry - whose previous premises
were at Fourth Ave. and Pine St. The architect of the building is listed as
Ira S. Harding. The building permit (#128588) was issued on December 10, 1913.

Site

The
building is located on the corner of Bell Street and Western Avenue, and commands
the Northwest corner of the intersection. The site slopes considerably from
the building’s original front (the East side) towards the West and Puget Sound
­ which is located several blocks below.

Situated
on a slope directly East and above Puget Sound, it embodies conditions considered
ideal for a flourishing industry at the time it was built. These were proximity
to large amounts of water, desirable commercial customers (hotels, restaurants
and rooming houses), and the facilitation of frequent deliveries. The structure’s
very existence testifies to growth and ambition; both within the laundry business
and the city of its day.

Today,
behind the Western facade of the building is an alleyway; the next street
to the West is Elliott Ave. The site also slopes slightly from the South to
North. The structure fills an entire 60' x 120' lot, which was platted as
Bell & Denny’s 1st addition Block 29, Lot 12. The building is constructed
of red “paving” brick with a gray concrete foundation. The roof was originally
tar and gravel; it has been renewed fairly recently. The large and expansive
windows were the main means of ventilation for the laundry’s original workforce,
who dealt with heat of up to and over 100°, as well as several types of heavy
machinery and weighty piles of clothing (both wet and dry). The windows have
brick sills but no surrounds. Currently, they are painted green as a deliberate
contrast to the building’s historic red brick.

The
building has three stories with a full basement, and the initial concrete
reinforcement is very visible. Sanborn maps show the site vacant in 1888,
the year pioneer D. C. Keeney came to Seattle. By 1893, there was a structure
on the lot, probably the stable Keeney later bought ­ in 1909 ­ from cigar
dealer E. C. Winebrenner and his clerk W. H. Gamidge.

The
laundry replaced Keeney's previous facility of the same name, and was purpose-built.

The
East facade

On
this facade, between the stepped-brick treatments of its pilasters and the
parapet which crowns the building, the Seattle Empire Laundry initially advertised
its name. This facade held the building’s original entrance: a door, for laborers,
on the Northernmost side. Its transom appears original. On the ground level,
in the building’s center, a wide garage door marks one former delivery entry.
This entry, which is about 12' wide, is a feature of most historical photos
of the building. It is especially prominent in the 1937 WPA survey photo.
In that photo, one can also see the old (now replaced) door on the South side
of this facade. It was then the entry into the laundry’s “will call office.”
It is clear from this photo that all windows on the Eastern facade have been
replaced in a style similar to the originals.

The
Eastern facade presents both a decorative and a “public” front, although its
onetime prominence is now partially obscured by the Alaskan Way viaduct. The
front’s decorative efforts take the form of brick pilasters (around 41"
wide) which run from the ground to the roof. Each is topped with stepped-brick
capitals and stepped brickwork is also set back between them. Thus, they both
“crown” and separate the large window bays. Several feet above these is another
decorative parapet. With a slightly more complex lacework of bricks being
created out of the same brick which forms the building’s “body text,” it appears
industrial yet somewhat stylish.

The
South facade

The
Southern (Bell St.) view of the Seattle Empire Laundry building is indeed
remarkable. Its nine full-length pilasters separate eight window bays on each
floor (four of those on the top, however, have been blocked by a billboard).
The stepped-brick capitals and the uppermost parapet complement these extremely
expansive windows. In total, it conveys an intact picture of the pre-labor
movement influence on the architecture of a typical industrial building (mill
construction).

Between
the stepped brick and the parapet on this facade, the laundry once lavishly
advertised its names ­ even as they changed throughout the years. In 1951,
the building was bought as a plant by James Branson Simpson’s Arctic Fur Company.
After his company’s merger with the Alaska Fur Company, in 1959, the ‘branding’
tradition was not merely continued, but amplified. With 1950’s promotional
zeal, the new “Alaska-Arctic” hung a large commercial billboard along the
Southern facade. Behind it lurks the laundry signage from the 1930s.

On
the South facade the slope exposes only part of the old basement windows.
They have been partially replaced (one pane each), but mostly they are now
filled in with opaque glass bricks. WPA Survey photographs from 1937 show
a fire escape on this facade, which served the first to third floors. This
was removed by the present owners some time after 1987.

The
West facade

The
West facade now directly faces an alley. It has a replacement garage door
on either side, as mentioned. The Southernmost door is hung on the original
track and marks the back delivery-route for laundry-wagons. The Eastern door
on the Northwestern corner of this facade, is now recessed and mechanical.
But, originally, it was two one-piece doors, which were opened to ventilate
the heat from the boiler-room.

A
large electrical equipment area between them is safeguarded by metal screening.
Formerly, it was a large window, exactly similar to those remaining on the
floor above. Each upper floor has three nine-light metal single-hung windows
and a single, smaller window. There is a one-brick sill beneath every window.
Comparing this with the photo of May 17, 1915 (used by the Port of Seattle
on a “then and now” pillar at the entrance to its Bell St. Pier complex),
one sees the upper three floors appear almost unchanged.

The
Western facade has but a simple brick cornice and parapet. Due to the brickwork
which marks the path of the laundry’s vast chimney, this facade’s disposition
of window bays is different. There is no attempt to make anything decorative
of this elevation, so there are no pretensions here for the “public.” The
Western facade thus demonstrates the truth of the building: at the laundry,
everything was business.

The
North facade

The
North facade is also topped simply with a brick cornice and parapet. But it
is also little changed. Superficially, it offers a less “charming” period
view. But, importantly, this elevation retains all but one of its original
windows. (The single exception is near the lowest Southeast corner.) These
windows are primarily four pane-over-four pane light double-hung wooden sash
windows. Each has a single-brick sill.

Most
importantly of all, the four small windows which ventilated the steam laundry's
"drying room" remain completely intact. They are the true signature
that marks the building construction as that of a historic steam laundry.

The
slope of the North also exposes some of the basement windows, many of which
also appear to be original. These are smaller-paned, six-over-six wooden windows.
All are currently screened for security.

The
interior

Few
interior alterations have been made to the structure; to walk into the building
is to enter a time capsule. Nothing of its past is hidden from you ­ every
rough edge has been left quite clearly exposed. The whole interior has a rough
and unpolished character, one which unashamedly retains its industrial roots.
The floors are laminated fir with fir trim. Ceilings are still painted wooden
boards; there are raw brick walls and exposed piping. A study of the retaining
walls indicates the large and open (industrial) layout has been changed minimally
to accommodate residents. The main support column is 24" x 24",
with concrete footing and a span of 12'. The first-floor joist, laminated,
is 2" x 6".

Inside
the Eastern facade’s original (workperson’s) entrance, the path once offered
to the laundry worker is clear: a steep, industrial-width staircase leading
straight up, from first to third floors. This stairway, with its contingent
landings, is reminiscent of its earliest function. All the stairs also retain
their original lamination, but are extremely worn. Clearly, they have been
trodden for many years by laborers. On each side is a wooden hand-rail; the
hand-rail to the right is attached to the raw brick wall.

The
stairway structure is wooden and both have dual wooden handrails. Piping is
exposed to the sides and beams are exposed above. The visitor is surrounded
by original building materials such as beaded lath.

The
building’s basement is all brick, entirely reinforced by 17"-thick concrete,
as part of its creator’s “purpose-built” scheme for a cost-effective laundry.
Somewhat inside the basement’s Northwest corner, one can easily see where
the 45' x 45' boiler-room sat. (It was set 4' below the level of the basement
floor. The actual boiler sat on a 30' x 45' concrete slab 8' thick, as a “fire-proofing”
measure.) The inside Southwest basement retains a 2' slope over 25', which
is the driveway formerly used by delivery trucks. Ceilings here are 12' from
the bottom of beam to floor. An exposed 10" x 16" wood beams run
North to South, 7'6" from center of beam to center of beam. A series
of 12"x16" wooden beams run the length of the building (120'), East
to West.

Fourteen
2' square concrete posts support the concrete ceiling cited in the early Sanborn
maps. They are augmented by four 12" square wood posts, which are sited
along the Southeast corner. To the fore of the basement’s Eastern section
sits the abandoned elevator shaft. Each floor of the Seattle Empire Laundry
had its task ­ soiled laundry deliveries and work with the boilers took place
in the basement. Although the boilers have vanished, along with machines like
the “mangle,” evidence of their existence and former placement remains. [As
the attached dissertation on historic context notes, within three years of
the building’s construction, its laundry workers officially sought legislation
“against work in basements or below street level”; Seattle Union Record April
7, 1917].

First
floor

The
first floor was dedicated to the laundry’s washing, and had to bear the weight
of heavy, fast-moving machinery such as the mangle and “the extractor.” The
first floor ceilings rose to 16' (bottom of beam to floor). The height, like
the large windows visible from outside the building, was an attempt at mitigating
some of the laundry’s quite extreme heat. The first floor’s wooden beams measure
8" x 20", they run North/South and are separated by only 5'. Every
15', a 12" square wooden post aligns with the center East/West beam which
runs the length of the building.

Second
floor

The
heavy reinforcement of the first floor was required by the task assigned to
the second: ironing. Here, the problem of heat was generated not only by hand
irons, but also by mechanical pressers and by special steam devices which
dealt with collars, cuffs, shirts, shirtwaists, etc. For this reason, again,
there are high ceilings and large windows. The ceilings here are 14' from
bottom of beam to floor. The second floor’s wooden beams measure 8" x
20", they run North/South and are separated by only 5'. Every 15', a
12" square wooden post aligns with the center East/West beam which runs
the length of the building. At least one-quarter of the second floor beams,
however, are reinforced on both sides with two 15' long 3" x 12"
wooden planks. These are bolted to the sides of the beams in an A-frame style.

When,
in 1923, John C. Hagen purchased D. C. Keeney’s laundry operation, he cut
two openings in the ceiling of this floor to form clothes chutes. These operated
between the second and first floors (permit #224814).

Third
floor

The
third floor, marked on the Sanborn maps as “storage,” was used for the “marking,”
inventory, and sorting of laundry. Again, when he purchased the laundry in
1923, John Hagen extended the use of machinery to this floor (permit #227730).
Thus the third floor, although it has smaller windows and ceilings (its ceilings
are 12', from the bottom of beam to the floor) also exemplifies an industrial
interior. The third floor’s wooden beams measure 8" x 16", they
run North/South and are separated by 7'6". Every 15', a 10" square
wooden post aligns with the center East/West beam which, again, runs the length
of the building.

•
Statement of Significance

We
are applying under these four of the six criteria available to us under Ordinance
106348:

•
Section 3.01 (2): “It is associated in a significant
way with the life of a person important in the history of the city, state
or nation.”

•
Section 3.01 (3): “It is associated in a significant
way with a significant aspect of the cultural, political or economic heritage
of the city, state or nation.”

•
Section 3.01 (4): “It embodies the distinctive
visible characteristics of an architectural style, or period or of a method
of construction.”

•
Section 3.01 (6): “Because of its prominence of
spatial location, contrasts of siting, age or scale, it is an easily-identifiable
visual feature of its neighborhood or the city and contributes to the distinctive
quality or identity of such neighborhood or the city.”

(4) The building as distinctly
representative of “purpose-built” industrial architecture and industrial construction

The
former Seattle Empire Laundry building is an almost perfectly preserved example
of an industrial building built “to type” and “for use.” Additionally, it
embodies something quite unique: it bears witness to union influence on the
industrial workplace. Here are the floorboards worn down by countless feet;
the poorly ventilated basement which housed the fearsome boiler. Here are
the original floorboards, with their metal patches ­ indications, like their
placement, of those spots where machinery once rested. Here, the worn stairwells
evidence many tiresome climbs and, on the Western side, they still confront
chilly winds off Puget Sound in winter. Everything about the former Seattle
Empire Laundry is entirely typical of its industrial purpose: wide stairways;
raw building materials; no-nonsense access; large interior spaces; high ceilings;
tall and wide windows. Clearly exposed are the huge, old-growth wooden beams
­ closely spaced to bear the weight of workers and machinery.

The
photo archive of this building’s past shows its essential structure has barely
changed. But when one gazes at interior photos from 1943 (taken by the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer), one sees women workers at the “Eagle” press. Here, looking
to the West, from the building’s second floor, one sees a very different world
­ now totally vanished. Clearly their environment is quintessential industrial
architecture. It is the only commercial laundry of the “laundry boom” era
[see below]
which survives in the Denny Regrade. The working men and many women
in the old photos are vanished. But the building remains, a visible testament
to their stories. [See also building
description]

(6)
Spatial location, siting, local recognition of structure

The
combination of the structure’s site and period air remain imposing. The appended
selection of photographs, taken at various points in time, clarifies how 2301
Western Ave. has become more and more significant as a local landmark. The
incremental loss of its historic surroundings, combined with the adverse impacts
of development on considerations of height, bulk and scale (most importantly
the loss of variation in character), have significantly increased its contributions
to the neighborhood. It is now one of very few structures in the immediate
area which still preserves and conveys something of the Denny Regrade’s initial
industrial character (along with the wooden frame building at 2315 Western
Ave., the former S.A.D.D. harness and leather shop at 2401 First Ave., the
preserved Oregon building at First Ave. and Bell St., and what remains of
the Austin A. Bell building facade). Given the planned nature of the local
Business Improvement Association’s “Bell Street Development [Enhancement]
Project,” its importance can only increase.

The
building’s spatial prominence, its preserved character, and the paucity of
structures of complementary scale, already make 2301 Western Ave. a distinctive
local landmark. This was tacitly recognized by the Port of Seattle when, constructing
an Elliott Ave. gateway to its Belltown Pier Convention complex, a picture
and text featuring the building were mounted on one of two educational pillars[1]

(3) The building as an embodiment of significant associations, both
with the cultural, political and economic heritage of the city, state and
nation:

•
Three seminal events of 20th century labor history

•
The 1955-1956 national “Davy Crockett coonskin cap phenomenon”

(4) The building as an embodiment of significant associations with
the lives of persons important in the history of the city, state and nation:

•
David Daniel Beck: city, state and nation

•
James Branson Simpson: city and state

•
John C. Hagen: city

Preface

David
Codding Keeney was the founder-owner of the Seattle Empire Laundry, the booming
firm which commissioned the 1913-1914 construction at 2301 Western. Keeney
was a Seattle pioneer who arrived in 1888 from Pennsylvania. One year later,
he was running a small hand laundry on First Ave.[2]
In 1905, he established a ‘power laundry,’ the Seattle Empire, at Fourth Ave.
and Pine St.[3] By 1913, he
was truly genuinely expanding, commissioning demolition of a two-story stable[4]
on Bell & Denny’s 1st Addition Block 29 Lot 12, and the construction of
a trademark laundry building. (Keeney had acquired the lot as early as 1909.)[5]

The
architectural character of the Seattle Empire Laundry building remains remarkably
intact and redolent of its economic function. It is the only extant commercial
laundry of its era in the Denny Regrade, an era when the Polk Directory lists
61 laundries and 60 “Chinese laundries.” But ­ more importantly ­ if one “listens”
to this structure, the building speaks eloquently for past events which had
deep effects upon the city, the region and even the nation. These events concerned
two quintessentially Northwestern industries: commercial laundries and the
fur trade. They directly involved persons, and struggles, of acknowledged
regional renown.

Most
importantly, they also shaped the strategies and the early career of unionist
Dave Beck, who in 1952 became General President of the International Brotherhood
of Teamsters. Beck led that union through its fastest growth period.[6] As the dynamic,
controversial boss of Western Conference of Teamsters, he was for years “excepting
the brief rise of Ole Hansen … Seattle’s only truly national figure.”[7]
Beck took the membership of the Teamsters from 78,000 to 1,580,000.[8]
Both Presidents Roosevelt and Truman asked him to serve as Secretary of Labor,
but he declined.[9] Beck was both
locally and nationally known as “Mr. Seattle,” and was personally responsible
for bringing over $100,000,000 in outside monies to the city.[10]

He
is, although central, not the only figure in our story. That also features
Beck’s early colleagues, Seattle’s laundry workers and drivers; Beck’s business
antagonists (Seattle Empire Laundry founder/owner David C. Keeney and the
laundry’s later owner, tycoon John C. Hagen). Additionally, from 1951 to 1977,
the former laundry played a special role in a different trade: fur. This second
incarnation revolved around another early, self-made Seattle magnate: Alaska
Fur Company founder, James B. Simpson. Simpson bought the structure as a plant
to manufacture gear for American soldiers in the Korean War, but it leapt
to unexpected fame in 1955-56. These were the years of the national “Davy
Crockett craze,” America’s greatest media-related merchandising phenomenon
ever.[11]
During the height of American Crockett-mania, Simpson’s plant at Bell and
Western was cranking out 5,000 “coonskin caps” per day.[12]

This
is, by any standards, a wonderfully valuable, varied history. This building
embodies the dark as well as the light of the past, both the deeply regional
and the famously national, the history of everyday working life and of TV’s
early mythology. We urge you to listen to this building’s singular saga, as
we have found it in archives and headlines, letters and memories. But we remind
you it also has a living component: the better conditions for today’s workers
which were forged by the early struggles of its onetime occupants.

Significant
labor history associations

Below
we outline the building’s significant association with three specific events
in labor history. These events created central changes in the lot of a unique
female population ­ the women who labored inside Seattle’s larger laundries.
They also enabled those women’s colleagues, the laundry and dye workers drivers,
to shape the West Coast future of the Teamsters union. The reason for the
latter connection comes through one individual; for these events mark ­ in
1917, the middle 1920’s, and 1932 ­ the inception of Dave Beck’s lifelong
involvement with labor. Through them, Beck would hone his philosophies and
form his strategies.

Between
1900 and 1917 it was extremely difficult for Seattle’s laundry workers, most
of them women, to organize in any fashion. The mere suspicion of union involvement
led to loss of work ­ even attendees at union meetings and visitors to the
Labor Temple Union hall were tracked, sighted, reported and fired by laundry
owners.[13]
Since 1890, when Seattle’s women laundry workers entered the Knights of Labor
(their local later dissolved in the 1893 depression) there had been consistent
efforts to organize the laundry workers. But all were met by unremitting opposition
from the owners, whose “blacklisting practices suppressed all worker initiative.”[14]

By
the time of Keeney’s expansion into 2301 Western Ave, a laundry workers’ union
had existed for some years but, given the owners’ power, it had “a very small
percentage of the laundry workers of the city as members. To join … meant
discharge. No laundry owners of importance in the city allowed members of
the laundry workers union to work in their plants.” They operated as one:
a “powerful organization of laundry owners.” “Discharged employees were blacklisted
and employment in other laundries could not be secured. Laundry drivers who
for any reason severed their relations with an employer could not again drive
a laundry wagon in Seattle for one year.”[15]
There was a reason for this intransigence: the laundry business had entered
a boom, one which would last for the first quarter of the new century.[16]
By 1912, it had become the city’s sixth-largest industry, employing only 300
fewer workers than the fourth and fifth (breweries and coal).[17]

The
laundry owners defended their growing profits aggressively, and David Keeney
ran Seattle Empire Laundry ruthlessly. The year his new plant was constructed,
it was denounced in the Seattle Union Record by union delegate Hilda O’Connor.[18]
In April of 1914, Keeney was chosen ­ by other owners ­ as one of three laundry
owners to serve on a Minimum Wage Conference for Laundries. This committee
which also had three laundry workers and three members of the public. Keeney
refused to meet with them.[19]

But
conditions in the laundries made them ripe for organization. Their grueling
hours, low pay and hard conditions also made the laundries a subject of public
discussion. “…Laundry Workers are among the hardest worked and poorest paid
workers in the industrial field, “ the Seattle Union Record had noted in 1912.[20]
Even Western Woman’s Outlook, a federation magazine for Seattle club women,
cited “intolerable conditions” in the local laundries: “Hours, wages, and
the conditions under which they are forced to labor put the laundry worker
among the most ill-treated of toilers.”[21]

Wages
were only part of why the public was paying attention. There were also well-founded
fears about sanitation. Progressive citizens noted the constant possibility
of serious health problems. In the laundries, at high temperatures, soiled,
sometimes infectious, fabrics were continually handled, mingled and sorted.[22]
(Along with goods from hotels, restaurants and rooming-houses, many commercial
laundries dealt with goods from hospitals). The women workers labored all
day in overheated rooms (and sometimes in basements),[23]operating
equipment, plunging their hands into chemicals, all the while often standing
on wet concrete. Few amenities were available to them; often there were no
sanitary or toilet arrangements, no break areas and no changing rooms. Shifts
were long and tedious; machinery was heavy and dangerous.

The
‘mangle,’ a mechanical ironing machine with padded rollers, required a team
of six women even to manage it. Heavy, wet laundry was also placed by women
into extractors, huge drums which spun fabrics to remove the excess moisture.
There were also specialized machines to starch and iron collars, deal with
cuffs, gentleman’s shirts and women’s shirtwaists.[24]
At the Seattle Empire Laundry, these tasks were assigned different floors:
washing, extracting, and the mangle were in the basement and on the first
floor. Ironing was carried out on the second floor, and the top floor used
for storage and “marking” (tagging, listing and sorting).[25]

Laundry
workers got no holiday pay and no vacation,[26]
and reports of health problems among them were continuous.[27]
In 1914, Caroline J. Gleason completed a report for the Industrial Welfare
Commission. Her investigation, “On the Wages, Conditions of Work and Cost
and Standards of Living of Women Wage Earners in Washington,” concurred with
grave concerns about the workers’ conditions.[28]
Also, only three years after the Seattle Empire Laundry was opened, “laundry
girls” asked the city to “prohibit [laundry]
work in basements or below street level.”[29]

Women
workers at Seattle Empire Laundry

Seattle
female laundry workers were a singular population. The average Seattle laundry
“girl” was older than other types of female employees. Plus, over one-third
were married ­ a much higher rate of married women than found in other occupations
of the time. Yet the laundries also attracted a number of ‘women adrift’ ­
again, a larger number than found in other occupations.[30]
A 1913 survey revealed that 62% of all laundry workers lived on their own
­ “supporting themselves with no help from family members. This far surpassed
other occupations; the next highest group of self-supporting females worked
in mercantile establishments. There, 35% of women workers lived on their own.”[31]

Obviously,
such a spectrum would benefit from union protection. But laundries like Seattle
Empire had another reason for retaining the interest of organizers. This was
their very large number of employees. Due to their harsh conditions and unusual
profile, female workers in laundries had a “stupendous turnover rate.” It
was, in fact, 357%.[32]
And it was the highest where their bosses cared the least: “The laundries
providing the best of labor conditions have a labor turnover of 150% while
others, less solicitous for the welfare of their employees change their complete
working force as many as five times during the year.”[33]
As the Seattle Union Record would eventually remark, Seattle Empire Laundry
had the worst of reputations.[34]
Consequently, it had plenty of “girls” to organize.

Women
chose laundry work out of desperation. One such employee, whose plight would
prove influential, was Mrs. Lemuel Beck, the mother of one young David Daniel.
Her family lived in utter poverty near the Seattle Empire, first at 304 Bell
St., then at 815 Pike[35].
Years later, in his role as “the most powerful and dynamic leader in Teamsters
history,” Dave Beck remembered:

“She
[my mother] worked in a laundry
at 8th and Olive. There were no regular hours, except that she had to be at
work at seven in the morning and she worked in the flatwork department ­ sheets,
pillow cases, table covers etc., until the job was finished. My sister and
I would go up to the laundry nights and wait outside until she was through.
It was seven or eight o’clock until she was done, and there wasn’t any overtime
pay. I’d heard something about unions, and believe me, it was then and there
that I decided they were all to the good. I can still see myself and my little
sister sitting on the curb outside that laundry while our mother drudged on
into the night behind those sweaty windows.”[36]

Imminent
confrontation - before the 1917 strike

Although
Keeney had declined to serve on the Laundry Minimum Wage Conference, the conference
eventually passed a minimum wage law in May of 1914.[37]
The result of a commission investigation into laundries, the wage was set
at $9.00 a week. Yet the laundry owners still evaded paying it. Some found
ingenious ways around this (two Seattle laundries simply traded staff at the
end of a ‘working day,’ thus extending the paid-for 8-hour day to 12 hours).[38]
Some opposed the very idea a laundry wage should allow a woman to support
herself.[39]
Unanimously, they continued to oppose worker organization, and D. C. Keeney
was among the most outspoken.

A
typical example of his behavior occurred on August 19, 1916, when he faced
off members of the laundry workers’ committee directly. The Seattle Union
Record reported Keeney’s views (and their relation to his workers’ plight).
The article was headlined “WOULD ABOLISH ALL LABOR LAWS Manger of Seattle
Empire Laundry Tells Laundry Workers Slaves Should Leave All to Masters”:

“A
committee of laundry workers called on Mr. D. C. Keeney, manager of the Seattle
Empire Laundry, this week for the purpose of ascertaining his views on organized
labor generally and the laundry workers in particular. Mr. Keeney seemed to
have no objection to his drivers becoming members of the union, but when the
matter of his inside employees joining was broached he became very sick at
heart and proceeded to tell all the vile features of the union movement.

Mr.
Keeney said he would not object to employees joining the union, but they must
not talk unionism in the plant, on the street or at home. In fact, they would
not be allowed to dream about it … Mr. Keeney’s enthusiasm waxed warm upon
the question of employers organizing, and favored one big pool embracing all
the laundries in Seattle. In other words, he believes in a closed shop to
this extent.

The
‘particular brand’ Mr. Keeney uses seems to have inspired him to lofty ideals.
He proposed that if there were no class legislation and no labor unions, the
bosses controlled the workers, nobody would be underpaid or overworked. One
will note that Mr. Keeney is a profound student of the economic question.

In
passing it is worthy of remark that the Seattle Empire Laundry has a reputation
all its own for low wage scale.”[40]

Meanwhile,
the “girls” employed at Seattle Empire Laundry were earning $6.65 ­ not $9.00
­ for their arduous week.[41]

From
1915, positions like that of Keeney became contributions to a future battle
royal ­ one which would continue into the early 1930’s, making both union
reputations and union history. One of its principal players would be Dave
Beck, the avenging son of an oppressed laundry worker. Beck grew up in Belltown
and attended Denny School; he never forgot his family’s early, extreme poverty
(“We were always poor, very, very poor. If it hadn’t been for my mother …
we would have starved.”[42]).
By the age of eight, Beck was scrambling to help financially. At one point,
he even shot rats for ten cents’ bounty a rodent ­ winning fifty cents per
rat if his kill showed signs of bubonic plague.[43]
Late in 1914, Beck got his first full-time job: as an inside washroom wringer
at the Central Wet Wash laundry. There, after learning personally what the
inside workers suffered, he joined Local 24, the laundry workers union.

Local
24 then represented all laundry and dye workers ­ as well as all the laundry
and dye wagon drivers. At the time Beck joined, interest in organizing the
laundry trade was reviving, after a long series of foiled or failed attempts
for the previous fourteen years[44].
The President of the national organization even came to Seattle.[45]
However, the laundry owners’ power remained so great that only the IXL Laundry
dared sign a union agreement. In February 1914, the Seattle Central Labor
Council tried to help; they termed the laundry workers, yet again, “the worst-used
class of girl workers in the city.” This time, however, there were concrete
plans: for a “cooperative,” a “union” laundry, where both conditions and pay
would be fair. The laundry owners fought the project tooth and nail, delaying
opening of the enterprise until late 1915.

But
what became the Mutual Laundry did finally open, despite incredible obstacles.
When the local laundry owners forced their machinery manufacturers to boycott
it, the Mutual’s creators secured equipment out-of-state. They continued to
do the same for supplies, sometimes resorting to fake names and even bribery.
Once it was finally operative, however, they used it quite effectively for
union organizing and publicity. Mutual employed around forty workers and its
better conditions caused substantial comment.[46]
Meanwhile, on September 9, 1916, Seattle’s Central Labor Council placed Keeney’s
Seattle Empire Laundry on a seven-laundry “unfair list.”

The
Union Record cited laundries’ “abuse” of women workers and claimed that, for
years, the listed laundries had “successfully blocked any and all attempts
to organize the laundry girls of Seattle.” They also claimed these laundries
had, for years, encouraged restraint of trade: “they are using various means
to eliminate from the field of competition the smaller plants.” The writer
noted also a difference between the lot of the drivers and “the girls” (“most
of these laundries do allow some drivers to belong [to a union] … But that is a matter of good
business tactics [for the owners].”)[47]

1917
­ the laundry girls strike

But
things were about to change ­ for both the girls and the drivers. On April
3, 1917, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters chartered the Seattle
Laundry and Dye Wagon Drivers as Local 566 ­ and Dave Beck became a charter
member.[48] Although Local
566 organized very quickly, owners refused to acknowledge their existence.
The very next day in fact, on April 4, Keeney and his fellow owners responded
by chartering a “Seattle Laundry Owners’ Club.” (The final signatory on their
articles of incorporation was John C. Hagen. Hagen, who acquired the Seattle
Empire Laundry business when Keeney retired, would become both Dave Beck’s
management nemesis and yet, in business terms, something of a mirror image).[49]

These
owners, however, did more than incorporate. They also signed a “blanket lease,”
under which each became a co-lessor of the other plants. Under this lease
­ given for only “a nominal consideration” ­ a Club “holding committee” was
empowered to seize and operate any plant whose owner agreed to any union terms.[50]
There was a $5,000 penalty for the breach of this agreement. The laundry owners
were digging in; after all, they had just boosted prices to the public from
10% to 25%.[51]
The workers, who had not seen any money from this rise, were restive.

In
early June of 1917, Seattle had just two “union laundries” ­ Central Wet Wash
and the Mutual. Local 24 was also at last beginning to grow. (From 94 members
in 1916, it now stood at 118).[52]
On June 12, 1917, Local 24 held a “special meeting” ­ to initiate 100 new
members.[53]
Then at 9 am on Thursday, June 14, 700 laundry girls (out of 1600 inside workers)
unexpectedly struck. At a union meeting that week, they had been told the
owners’ trust would fire all union members at the end of the week. Therefore,
the girls voted for preemptive action.

Arriving
to work as usual at 8 o’clock on June 14, the laundry girls worked an hour
and then staged a walkout. Keeney and the other 16 members of the owners’
club declined to meet at all with the strikers: “[we] positively refused to accede to union
demands.” The women wanted better conditions and full union recognition. They
also demanded a new wage scale, claiming that average pay (three years after
the minimum wage had been set at $9.00) was only $5.87 a week. The Union Record
immediately backed them up ­ with front-page photographs. These displayed
two experienced women laundry worker’s checks. One had earned $5.97 for the
week; the other, $8.62.[54]

By
the evening of June 14, 1,100 women were on strike; 20 of 24 laundries in
the city were standing idle.[55]
By June 15, Keeney’s Seattle Empire Laundry was completely shut down. Only
eight of the city’s 24 larger laundries were in fact operative (five of these
were union shops, the other three were using strike breakers).[56]

Within
days, the laundry girls were joined by other strikers: Local 40 (the Steam
and Operating Engineers) and the recently-organized Local 566. In four days,
between 1,200 and 1,500 workers, drivers and engineers had walked off their
jobs. When the drivers struck in aid of the laundry workers, it was despite
offers of stock in the laundries ­ and better percentages.[57]
The newspapers reacted in panic at their defection ­ publishing headlines
like “Paper Collars and Towels Loom as Substitutes.”[58]
Yet the ‘Laundry Owners Club’ remained immovable; they were prepared for “a
fight to the finish against union shops.”[59]
By June 19, however, all plants excepting those in the Laundry Owner’s Club
and the West Seattle Laundry came to terms with the union.[60]
Shortly after the start of the strike, James F. Brock arrived in Seattle.
As President of the International Union Laundry Workers, he provided considerable
weight and publicity for the workers’ cause.[61]

Despite
the fact that all their operations were clearly crippled[62],
the Owners’ Club took newspaper ads in which they stated “all the seventeen
plants are in operation.” Such claims led to angry editorials elsewhere. The
Union Record took the Laundry Owners’ Club to task for lying, calling them
“martyrs to the cause of dirty linen and dirty methods.” (Added the writer,
referring to their mutual ruthlessness, “’club’ is very appropriate in this
case”).[63]

By
June 16, the Union Record was logging the laundries which had been particularly
brutal to organizers. Keeney’s Seattle Empire was number two on their list.
The Record noted, that from its inception, the strike had “crippled” these
laundries; it also noted plants were “forced to close down entirely.”

On
June 22, the workers of Local 24, Local 566 and Local 40, the three unions
now on strike, held a well-attended downtown parade, including 900 women marchers.
Music was provided by 60 members of musicians from Local 76 and a good time
was had by all. The girls’ solidarity, however, was not unfounded. Every Seattle
union which had met since the strike began was contributing, and the strikers
also enjoyed much public support.[64]
In addition, they solicited sympathy from the customer class. (A union rep,
for instance, spoke to the King County Legislative Federation, petitioning
support from their women’s club delegates). Laundry girls sponsored an information
booth at the Fremont Canal Festival; they also marched in Columbia City’s
‘Rainier Valley Fiesta.’[65]

Finally,
on June 23, a member of the Owners broke ranks. This was the Peerless Laundry,
which acceded to the union’s demands. The move precipitated a war within the
Laundry Owners’ Club. Keeney, Hagen and company told Peerless president T.
J. Williams that he must forfeit to them his entire plant and business. They
also asked for the breach-of-agreement $5,000.[66]
Williams, however, stood firm, refusing to turn over his plant and telling
the Owners’ trust, “I am willing to take a chance.”[67]

The
crippled owners did not, in the end, pursue their legal battle; yet the strike
against them dragged on into July. The case of the Peerless deluged the owners’
trust with bad publicity ­ a typical damning headline was “’Club’ Tries to
Use Club.”[68]
The final blow, however, came from the owners’ very class and community. When
the weekly Business Chronicle of the Pacific Northwest published an article
backing the union, they minced no words (“Owners Wrong in Strike of Laundry
Girls”):

“This
is the first time that this newspaper ­ which is opposed on principle to strikes
and the general arrogant attitude of organized labor ­ has seen merit in the
strikers’ cause … The Business Chronicle believes that those laundries that
will not pay their female help enough to live on with at least some semblance
of decency, should be rebuked not only in the name of humanity, but also for
the good of all business.”[69]

By
July 6, the Owners knew they needed public redemption: finally, they entered
into negotiations with the union. Two days later, the long strike was finally
ended, with front-page headlines.[70]
With the help of Local 566 and Local 40, the girls of Local 24 had won a wage
increase, full union recognition and a closed shop. They also won, as the
Seattle Daily Times reported, “betterments in working conditions that are
generally regarded as equally if not more important.” This sentiment indicated
the role the owners’ cartel had played. Their oppressive arrogance, and their
disregard for conditions, had strengthened both the girls’ determination and
public sympathies. While other unions declined in power after World War I,
Seattle’s laundry workers maintained the strength they had forged. In 1920,
they reported 1,000 members.

1925-1926:
local laundries make national waves

The
morning after “peace” was agreed, Seattle Empire Laundry workers were back
to the job “as usual.”[71]
But their right to bargain for fair treatment would be tested again. This
time, the contest would oppose not only workers and bosses, but two of Seattle’s
very different rising stars.

One
was the ambitious businessman John C. Hagen, one of the actual instigators
of the Laundry Owners’ cartel. Hagen was born in Bozeman, Montana in 1885
and moved to Seattle at the age of 23. His parents, born in Switzerland, both
spoke German ­ and in his new home, their son employed a German-born maid.
Less than two years after he arrived in town, the restless Hagen had established
a laundry of his own. Initially located on First Avenue, this was the Broadway
Laundry Company (a.k.a. Seattle Laundry Company).

As
his involvement with the Laundry Owners’ Club attests, things went steadily
well for this aspiring industrialist. In 1922, when D. C. Keeney retired,
Hagen was able to buy the Seattle Empire Laundry business from him. When Keeney
died, in 1936, the building’s actual ownership was retained by his son, Seth
C. Keeney. To mark this landmark moment in his fortunes, Hagen changed the
firm’s name on August 1, 1923: it then became the Broadway Empire Laundry
Company. The same day, Hagen changed the name of his original plant, the Broadway
Laundry, to Seattle Laundry Company.[72]The
purchase did indeed eventually prove a seminal moment. For Hagen ­ an early
backer of laundry owners’ trusts ­ became much more than just an industry
entrepreneur. Through other takeovers of established laundries, he himself
built a de facto laundry cartel.
It was this business drive, coupled with his scorn of labor, which created
head-to-head conflict with Dave D. Beck.

Hagen’s
acquisition of the Seattle Empire Laundry was his first clue that his ideas
could work. He became eager to try further expansion ­ to situate himself
with the owners, so this would be possible. (Later the same year he acquired
Seattle Empire, Hagen also purchased another successful laundry.) Playing
on the paternalistic nature of the industry, Hagen would slowly amass a real
laundry “empire.” Eventually, his reach encompassed eight Seattle laundries,
as well as companies in Wenatchee, Spokane and Yakima.[73]

As
John C. Hagen rose, so did Dave D. Beck. He had achieved elected union office
right after the strike; on July 28, 1917, he was voted recording-secretary
of Local 566. But he also served in the World for a year; from December, 1917
to December, 1918. (A member of the Naval Aviation Service, Beck trained in
California and served in Killingholme, England[74]).
In Seattle, he settled as a driver for the Mutual Laundry. Beck was so energetic
that he was rapidly promoted, from mere driver to route superintendent.[75] At the same
time, he was attracting notice in his union. The year Seattle Empire Laundry
passed from D. C. Keeney to Hagen, Beck was elected President of Joint Council
#28, an association of all the Teamster locals in Washington.[76]

In
December of 1924, 50 drivers petitioned Beck to run as the business agent
(principal officer) of Local 566. This meant leaving a $110 per week driver’s
job ­ for a $40 per week union post. Beck later said it occasioned “the only
fight I ever had with my first wife, and we were married 47 years.”[77] In the actual
election, Beck defeated an 8-year incumbent, by a vote of 140 to 88.[78]
But he was, at last, the head of a union.

Beck
then became his Laundry and Dye Wagon Drivers Local’s delegate to the Joint
Council of Teamsters. (In 1924, he was elected to the Joint Council’s Executive
Board and served on the Officers’ Reports Committee of the Washington State
Federation of Labor’s annual meeting.)[79]
Rapidly, he was becoming a figure of union importance.

One
reason was Beck’s tremendous talent as an orator. These were already familiar
to his Laundry and Dye Worker colleagues, as one of the most famous Beck anecdotes
illustrates:

In
December 1918, Beck had just arrived home from the war. For clothing, he still
had only his Navy uniform. Yet, on the very evening he returned to town, Beck
was invited to address Local 566, on the subject of a looming General Strike.
He derided the idea of the strike in ringing tones. The firebrand in his sailor
suit won a standing ovation. And his union did not then endorse the strike.
Local 566 was the only Teamster union to vote against it.[80]

This
event was an early indicator. Not merely did it show Beck’s flair for drama,
but also something of the strategies he would forge. For Beck became a prototypical
1920’s “business unionist.”[81]
As a member of the Joint Council of Teamsters Executive Board, he often criticized
radicalism and sympathy strikes. As historian Jonathan Dembo notes:

“He
did not believe that organized labor should try to reform society. According
to Beck, the only commodity that working people had to sell was their labor.
The role of the union was to get for them the best possible price for the
least amount of work. He was militant only in the sense that he would go to
virtually any lengths to secure this end. He also believed in the right and
the necessity of employers to earn a profit. He made speeches and wrote articles
extolling the virtues of free enterprise, profits, and private property. His
position helped assuage employers’ fears of unions, and it helped build up
support for organized labor among the middle class. By the same token, Beck’s
pro-business propaganda helped establish a close alliance between himself
and President William Short of the Washington State Federation of Labor. Impressed,
Short adopted Beck as a sort of protégé.”[82]

Like
the first-generation American John Hagen, Beck ­ who had come from the slums
­ would enter Seattle society via business. But Hagen joined the Broadmoor
Golf Club and Washington Athletic Club. (Ambrose Richards, his new Broadway
Empire Laundry secretary, for 30 years attended every Seattle Kiwanis Club
meeting).[83]
Beck, in contrast, established a national presence, wielded a national influence
­ and then, for two and a half years, served time in prison. But, strangely,
each helped shape the future of the other.

During
his early ascension in the union, Beck again worked for the union-owned Mutual
Laundry. Later, he returned as a driver to Central Wet Wash. There, the $110
a week wage he later sacrificed made him one of Seattle’s highest paid drivers.
More to the point, what he learned, both working in and observing laundries
“had much to do with his future course as a union leader”[84]. For instance:

“Formerly,
laundry truck drivers had been company employees; they received a basic minimum
wage plus a commission on the business they brought to the laundry. After
the war, however, expanding businesses and increased competition caused companies
to seek ways of reducing expenses. In firms that employed truck drivers ­
laundries, bakeries, milk and beer distributors, construction firms, and drayage
or highway trucking companies ­ the biggest expense was labor. In order to
meet the competition, employers reduced maintenance on their trucks, they
went without insurance, they neglected safety practices, and they and their
employees worked dangerously long hours. But these steps were insufficient.
To survive, small businessmen needed even stronger controls on their labor
costs. The owner-operator system, by which the employers eliminated wages
altogether, forced drivers to become virtual subcontractors. As owner-operators,
they worked on a straight commission basis and had to buy their own trucks.”[85]

This
arrangement, of course, left drivers with the lion’s share of risks and costs;
they were forced to become virtual owner-operators. Although Beck profited
by his ambition and energies, he saw this as another inequity of the industry.[86]
But, as he later revealed, Beck’s decisions were also political. “I was perhaps
one of the two or three highest paid drivers of the city, based on my ability
to go out and earn on the commission system. I knew that I either had to go
in and become an investment part of the laundry industry and get away from
labor completely or else I had to get over into the labor movement, because
I had reached the saturation point of earnings in the laundry industry.”[87]
Beck knew he had talents and abilities; he did not want them limited.

As
business agent of Local 566, a regular part of Beck’s duties took him inside
every laundry. At the Broadway Empire Laundry, as at others, he realized that
Hagen had changed Keeney’s working conditions little.[88]
So, Beck launched a vigorous organizing drive ­ then set out to negotiate
directly with owners.

It
was, of course, a recipe for conflict. The old Seattle Laundry Owners’ Club
was formulated quickly, when a strike loomed in 1917. But the owners’ cartel
behind it still smarted from their loss. In 1918, they became the Seattle
Laundrymens’ Club, with a formal office in the Arctic Building. Their aim
(in pamphlets with titles such as “All About Laundry”) was to present owners
­ not workers ­ as their industry’s “face.” By 1924, with offices in the Securities
Building, they had become the “Seattle Laundryowners’ Association.” They also
forged an alliance with the Washington Laundry Owners.

Beck,
however, was amassing power of his own. In 1925 he became Secretary of Seattle’s
Joint Council of Teamster[89]
­ and proved instrumental in preventing a spring strike (between the General
Teamsters and the Truck Owners’ Association of Seattle.) That May, however,
negotiations began between Locals 566, 43, 40 and the Laundry Owners’ Association.
These negotiations would eat up almost nine months ­ and they involved much
more than renewing the unions’ agreement. The owners, led by Hagen, wanted
revenge for 1917; they were determined to assert control over their industry.
And, as John Hagen made clear, they wanted to crush the troublesome unions.
Hagen saw this proposition as insuring his future. He might not acquire his
next laundry until 1929, yet he envisioned a future of such acquisitions.
It was a future, Hagen felt, which depended on crushing labor representation.[90]

For
Beck, who was leading negotiations for the three unions, this was a make-or-break
moment. He hoped to merge his experience, beliefs and hopes into an actual
strategy. Knowing history could be made within Seattle’s laundry industry,
Beck had prepared extremely thoroughly for the battle:

“First,
he studies the laundry industry carefully. Having attended law and business
classes at the University of Washington’s night school, Beck often knew as
much about the operations and economic problems of the laundries as the employers
did. Moreover, he was prepared to see both sides of any problem. As a result
of his investigations, Beck concluded that labor and management should cooperate
in the regulation of the laundry industry and should transfer any new costs
to the customers. The first step was to “stabilize,” that is to equalize,
labor costs within the industry by forcing the laundries to pay their drivers
a standard, guaranteed minimum wage. Beck reasoned that if he could reduce
differences in labor costs among various firms, he could reduce the competition
on labor costs. That is, if employers knew that all their competitors faced
the same labor costs, regulated by Beck and the Teamsters, they would compete
with one another in other areas, such as improved services, better advertising,
or greater efficiency. At the same time, if they could equalize labor costs
by establishing minimum wages, Beck and the Teamsters could place a floor
under the truck drivers’ incomes and remove one of the greatest uncertainties
in their lives.”[91]

The
negotiations began in the late spring of 1925 and involved 2000 workers. In
May, Local 24 had presented a new wage scale to the city’s Central Labor Council.
It requested a 44-hour rather than 48-hour week, with a modest wage increase
for the lowest paid “girls,” below “8 or 9%.”[92]
Hagen and his Laundryowners’ Association ­ yet again ­ refused to meet with
union representatives. Instead, they publicized their “ultimate determination
to establish the non-union shop.”[93]
While Hagen’s association refused to budge an inch, Beck had his eye on an
upcoming civic event.

Due
to convene in Seattle in September, this was the 78,000-strong 1925 National
Convention of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. On grounds of rank,
the local head for its “arrangements” should have been Harry Dail, Secretary
of the largest and most powerful Teamsters Local in the Northwest, 174 (Dail
was also President of Joint Council #28.) But he turned this job over to the
energetic Beck (himself Treasurer of Joint Council #28). Beck knew this would
be his chance to shine at a national level. While Hagen ran business-as-usual
at the Broadway Empire Laundry, Beck worked against him with one eye on schemes
for September. And the laundry workers held their ground, continuing to press
their case with unity. To help, Local 566 took out an advertisement, rebuking
the city’s only non-union “white laundry.”[94]

On
August 13, 1925, Beck wrote to Hagen directly. In the face of deadlock, he
proposed arbitration. Hagen waited seven full days to reply[95]
(Ironically, both Local 566 and the Laundryowners’ Association were housed
in the Securities Building). The owners, Hagen told Beck, would “gladly submit”
to a plan for arbitration ­ as long as wage reductions
were considered and the open shop
was part of any deal. Hagen’s letter was a masterpiece of provocation, complete
with a postscript which offered Beck the chance to solve everything. All he
needed to do was sign and return Hagen’s screed.

During
August and September of 1925, letters flew back and forth between Beck and
Hagen.[96]
Beck consistently asked for negotiation and arbitration; Hagen (now styled
Chairman of the Associated Laundries of Seattle) mocked him, scorned him and
obfuscated every issue. He also accused Beck of trying the gouge the customers,
of ignoring conditions country-wide and of “risking” the industry. Hagen’s
correspondence is verbose and pompous; Beck, by contrast, limits himself to
the points at issue.[97] He was not
about to flinch at John Hagen’s baiting. Nor does he demonstrate a need to
inflate his image.

Beck
was also busy arranging the Teamster Convention. As Secretary of the Arrangements
and Credentials Committee, he not only fixed schedules, hotels, and entertainments.
When the Teamster bigwigs finally arrived in town, Beck arranged for many
of them to sit in on laundry “bargaining sessions.” The observers included
figures such as Dan Tobin (President of the International Brotherhood) and
San Francisco’s Mike Casey. For them, Beck’s “adroit performance” in outwitting
antagonists left them with no doubt about his singular talents.[98]

Beck
also gained much attention at the convention itself: he met and charmed both
delegates and their spouses. From the floor, his quick thinking even helped
President Tobin ­ to avert an embarrassing constitutional fight.[99]
By the convention’s end, through a range of means (which included turning
down influential positions, because there were “more deserving candidates”)[100],
Beck had solidified his support and friendships at national level.

A
month after the Teamsters Convention, William M. Short, President of the Washington
State Federation of Labor, grew alarmed at the state of the laundry standoff.
Extremely concerned to resolve the deadlock, he felt that any chance to do
so was vanishing. Acting on the earlier suggestion of arbitration, he wrote
to all parties ­ to try and bring them to the table. Short’s secret weapon
was the Reverend Mark Allison Matthews, the prominent pastor of Seattle’s
First Presbyterian Church. Matthews formally volunteered such services to
both Beck and Hagen. Hagen replied, in typically high-handed form: “We have
always been, and are still, willing to arbitrate any matters the unions wish
arbitrated, provided the unions accord us the equal privilege of arbitrating
all the matters we wish considered.”[101]

Beck,
however, was accommodating. He immediately accepted, as did Local 24. Matthews’
plan called for each side to select one representative ­ who, in turn, would
name a third, acceptable to either side. Beck and Hughes put forward Short
as their representative. (He was, they realized, a close friend of Matthews
­ and Matthews, Beck would later note, was trusted by all participants.[102])
Problems developed, of course, around the choice of each third arbitrator,
eventually causing a change in the entire formula. By the end, negotiations
required a whole coalition: Matthews, Short, William E. Penney (President
of the Federated Industries), Mayor Edwin J. Brown and A. G. Bixby of the
Seattle Times.

Even
so, several times a strike was narrowly averted, especially when ­ some months
into “good faith arbitration” ­ Hagen’s Associated Laundries broke off negotiations.
In a last-ditch display of despotism, they suddenly announced to the press
that “henceforth their plants would be conducted on an open-shop basis.” Local
24 then voted almost unanimously to strike. But Rev Matthews pressed hard
on Hagen. In the end, the Empire’s owner was brought back to the table ­ and,
finally, forced to accept unions within his industry. Publicly, the Laundryowners
capitulated, posting billboards which recanted statements made just one week
earlier.[103]
A further week later, on February 20, 1926, the unions and the Laundryowners
­ Beck and Hagen ­ came to terms.

The
union girls of the Broadway Empire Laundry earned a minimum wage of $16.50
per week; they had asked for $18. Instead, after nine months, they received
$17.25. But their “apprenticeship requirements” were abolished. These requirements
had kept wages to $13.20 per week, for periods that ranged from three to nine
months. Given the high turnover in their arduous workplace, three to nine
months might comprise a woman’s career in the laundries. The 4-hour reduction
in the work week they asked for was lost; the girls had waived it to continue
negotiations.[104]

Laundry
drivers, who earned a $25 per-week minimum, had sought an increase to $35.
They won $30, with revisions to the price lists. But, within two weeks of
hiring on at any plant, all laundry employees now had to apply for union membership.
Dave Beck had won, and the closed shop was saved. Not only, however, did he
preserve the unions ­ he also endowed each one with specific new leverage.
“The old agreement,” wrote the Union Record, “which is being superseded by
the new contracts, was a blanket agreement covering workers in the three unions
­ Laundry Workers, Drivers and Stationary Engineers ­ but the new agreements
are separate.”[105]

William
Short had realized the issues at stake in Beck-versus-Hagen; he knew, potentially,
they could affect other industries. When he reported to the WSFL annual convention,
Short cited the profound importance of what he termed “The Seattle Laundry
Situation”:

“The
task of bringing about final consummation of these agreements occupied the
major portion of the time of your president from the adjournment of the last
convention until the end of February, exclusive of the two months spent in
Olympia attending the sessions of the Legislature.

It
has not been the practice of the Federation to devote so much of the time
of its officers to any one local question, but inasmuch as the union and non
union shop question had been so predominantly the issues, with the result
of the decision having a general affect on the whole union or non union shop
situation as it related to the entire labor movement of the state, it was
felt that the time taken in again vindicating union shop principles would
be well spent.”[106]

For
Matthews, also, it was his “most dramatic role” of the decade.[107]

The
aftermath ­ the bitter 1932 laundry strike

Beck
and Hagen remain linked by the laundry at Bell and Western, which crystallized
both their attempts to become dominant in the industry. Each had used it for
imperial aspirations ­ Beck used its circumstances, at a moment in time, to
test his wiles and build up his power. Hagen, more simply, saw it as the cornerstone
in an empire: one which he was starting to buy up and consolidate. Although,
in 1925, they seemed polar opposites, hindsight reveals they shared certain
characteristics.

Beck’s
correspondence with Hagen during the late 20’s, for instance, reveals how
his theories of labor relations are developing. In a reasoned letter to Hagen,
dated August 8, 1925, he states “I want to call your attention, however, to
the fact, oft repeated by the laundry owners, that conditions surrounding
the business have been caused by the owners themselves due to the fact that
no constructive policy of stabilization and improvement of conditions have
been adopted within the industry and no unity of action displayed except when
they band together for the purpose of attempting refusal of better conditions
for the employee … Yes, we are greatly concerned with the patrons ­ we meet
them every day, they become our close friends and their welfare is always
our concern. You well know that our requests involve no burden on them, but
rather by proper conduct of the laundry business will greatly benefit them.”[108]

From
joining, inspecting and backing the laundry workers of Seattle, Beck evolved
a tactical and sophisticated grasp of their plight ­ one which knew that strategies
which addressed it could be used elsewhere. “Stabilization” became one of
Beck’s great themes ­ and one of his personal weapons. “Beck realized,” writes
Donald Garnel, “that the basic problem faced by the [laundry]
union and its employers was complicated in dealing largely with small, undercapitalized
business units in the already traditionally low-capital service industries,
it was relatively difficult to effect internal cost savings. Besides, his
analysis led him to realize that low wages and poor working conditions were
more often the consequence of severe competition in the product (or service)
than of greed on the part of employers or in efficiency on the part of workers.”[109]

Hence,
Beck’s “pro-business tactics” could appear seductive to management opponents.
Beck would always make one proposal to the owners of an industry:

“The
package had three elements: first, a reduction or limitation on the number
of firms; second, stabilization of prices and wages; and third ­ the catch
­ the closed shop … Within a year of Beck’s tenure as an official in the Seattle
Teamsters, not only had Seattle’s bakeries said yes to that offer, but so
had all its local tracking firms, laundries (except one), dairies and taxi
firms. 1925 proved the turning point in labor-capital relations in local transportation.
Strikes disappeared. Arbitration and negotiation served instead.”[110]

The
fact that Beck ­ however long it took ­ had averted strikes in 1925-26 did
not pass unnoticed. Robert Lewis Schwellenbach (later Secretary of Labor under
Harry Truman) and Robert McFarlane (eventually president of the Northern Pacific
Railroad) were law partners with big commercial laundries as their clients.
In 1926, they were engaged in forging a laundry merger ­ like Hagen, they
envisioned a giant, chain operation. But Schwellenbach and McFarlane hoped
to bypass labor problems, with an experienced superintendent who knew business
from both sides. They wooed Beck ­ still business agent for Local 566 ­ for
this position, with a hefty salary. Fifty-two years later, Beck remembered
how tempting it was.[111]

Beck
talked the offer over with Teamster Mike Casey in San Francisco. Casey, convinced
Beck would surely “go over” to business, wrote to the International’s President
Dan Tobin. Tobin quickly wrote to Beck, offering to subsidize his salary from
Teamster resources. Thus, while still paid as head of Local 566, Beck became
a part-time organizer for the International Brotherhood in the Pacific Northwest.
Early in 1927, Tobin appointed Beck a full-time organizer ­ and he finally
gave up his salaried job with Local 566. In recognition of his service to
the union, however, Beck was made “president” of the Laundry and Dye Wagon
Drivers’ Union. It was a quasi-honorary position he still held in the 1950’s.[112]

“In
later years,” reported Donald Garnel, “Beck rejected numerous business opportunities,
often at salaries well above what he receive in the International Union having
felt that his proper niche in life was organized labor.”[113]
As Schwellenbach and McFarlane had observed, Beck had every quality required
for success in business: observation, innovation and perseverance. Just like
John C. Hagen, he used them to make an empire. But, whereas Hagen created
his dominion through purchases, Dave Beck’s singular empire was self-built.

In
1930, Beck negotiated a five-year contract for the laundry drivers. But Hagen,
too, was trying to move ahead with his plans. Having acquired yet another
flourishing laundry business, he re-baptized the Broadway Empire the “Empire
Laundry Company.” The unions had not succeeded in ending the owners’ cartel;
it had simply changed title, to the “Northwest Laundrymens’ Association.”
Just as John C. Hagen began to negotiate with Oscar W. Nelson to buy yet another
laundry,[114]
the cartel’s force re-emerged.

In
1932, pleading economic depression, the owners asked a favor of the unions.
They wanted to start contract negotiations three years early. For the drivers,
Beck agreed to a wage reduction of $10 per week (from $40 to $30). But Local
24 was not easily swayed. Although they agreed to minimum wage reductions
(from $17.25 to $14.25),[115]
they balked at loss of holiday pay. Once again the owners, headed by John
Hagen, got together a “holding company” through which the cartel could oppose
them. This time, they called it Seattle Laundry Company, Inc.; it was incorporated
June 27, 1932.[116]
The day after, “blunt notices” appeared in the Empire Laundry, as they did
in all the other “Company” laundries. The notices announced a 15% cut in wages
­ and the complete removal of holiday pay. Many workers claimed the notices
asked them “to give up their union.”[117]

On
August 4, 1932, 1200 women laundry workers walked off the job in seven laundries;
the following day, the strike had spread to eleven laundries. The day of the
first walkout, in Seattle Superior Court, charges were formally filed against
the Seattle Laundry Company, Inc. They were brought by none other than David
D. Beck and Samual R. Gibboney (both were described in the press as “two stockholders
of one of the [laundry] concerns.”[118]
They did indeed hold stock in Superior Service Laundries ­ which was the five-strong
chain Beck was earlier asked to supervise.)

This
time, Beck had gone ­ by legal means ­ to the heart of the matter. His suit
charged that “nearly all Seattle laundries had organized a monopoly to maintain
excess prices and stifle competition.”[119]
He told the press he had brought the suit as a stockholder, to stop Superior
Service from entering a monopoly. Beck claimed Seattle Laundries, Inc. involved
32 laundries (its secretary told the press the number was 22). Judge Kaxis
Kay issued a restraining order against Superior Service ­ directing them not
to enter into a laundry “combine.”[120]

The
same day, the Associated Press “disclosed” that Attorney General John H. Dunbar
was “investigating the alleged Seattle laundry combinations.”[121]

The
1917 strike had featured parades and public sympathy. This one, from its inception,
involved strike breaking, pitched battles and destruction of property. The
first calls to police occurred on August 5, when 80 striking employees engaged
with strikebreakers. The women fought with hatpins and knives and even pots
of pepper; and three of them were detained by police. In another incident,
a would-be scab was badly beaten. The women injured ranged in age from 22
to 53; many were afraid to inform police of their names.[122]

As
rumors of “two hundred strike-breakers from Tacoma” circulated, the laundry
owners became afraid of further violence. By Saturday am, they had asked the
police for protection ­ The Seattle Times read “Police on Guard Over 11 Laundries.”
Crowds of workers assembled outside these laundries and police chief Tony
Norton pleaded for peace with these pickets. (He also issued an order for
“strict neutrality” when his officers started taking sides with the strikers[123].)

The
day before, members of Seattle Laundries, Inc. held an emergency meeting all
afternoon. But, as always, they declined to answer charges ­ or to make any
kind of public statement. Hagen, however, was losing control of his prize
possession; by Saturday, girls started walking out of the Empire Laundry.
That evening, “warfare broke out anew” ­ police alleged that women pickets
beat a non-union man, stoned a scab delivery driver and stole bundles of laundry.[124]

Another
“development” was reported in Sunday’s paper: Prosecuting Attorney Robert
M. Burgunder sharply criticized the laundry owners’ practices. Burgunder sounded
somewhat like Beck when he said:

“Laundry
prices are entirely too high. The laundries have made no move to bring there
prices down to current commodity levels. Instead they have entered into agreements
which they secretly violate by giving rebates to preferred customers. But
the general public is forced to pay the bill and the employees have suffered
by the consequent decline in business.”[125]

August
8 proved a bitter day for Hagen. It began when owners and striking workers
were called to Mayor John Dore’s office. By noon, however, they had failed
to reach an agreement. “Nobody,” Dore told The Times, “seems to have an idea.”
Outside, both bricks and tomatoes were still being hurled through laundry
windows.[126]

Then,
Local 24 called out yet another plant. This time it was Hagen’s first purchase,
sited in Seth Keeney’s massive Bell and Western building. Although some of
its workers had already joined the strike, Local 24 had not officially called
out the Empire Laundry. But, when that call came, the building soon emptied.[127]
As it did so, hundreds of women ­ including Empire staff ­ headed off to a
mass meeting at the Labor Temple. There, they endorsed Mayor Dore as a mediator
(while rejecting the Reverend M. A. Matthews). Calling the Empire staff out
finally forced an end to the strike: by seven pm, Hagen was back in Mayor
Dore’s office. Confronting him on the part of the laundry workers was William
M. Short ­ the ally whose loyalty Beck had secured seven years earlier.[128]

“We
are going to stay here,” Dore told the men, “until we have a decision … We
can’t turn the entire police force over to parade up and down in front of
a few laundries. If you persist in this policy, you may start something nobody
can stop.”[129]
There were plenty of “angry words” and “hot charges” but, by 10 pm, Dore ­
and the workers ­ had a compromise. The laundry workers’ minimum wage would
be $15 a week, with some salary adjustments in the higher brackets. As for
the vexed question of holiday pay, the laundry “girls” would work on a per-day
basis. As a result, there would be no holiday pay. Once again, however, the
closed shop was still preserved.

That
night, outside the Empire Laundry, the “girls” were still picketing when news
of the deal came through. It was interrupted, once more, by violence ­ when
the 21 year-old Ellary A. Buddle menaced the strikers with a revolver.[130]
Meanwhile, John Hagen and William Short held a joint press conference. “Nobody
but the Mayor,” grimaced Hagen, “could have brought us together.”[131]

Of
course, the person behind Short’s presence there was actually Beck. Not only
did Beck understand the plight of the Empire Laundry’s women; he had actually
trodden its steps, met the women workers and brought his ambition to their
aid. He roused the laundry drivers to a sense of power and fellowship. He
made Seattle’s “most ill-used of toilers” a priority for much stronger, larger
unions ­ partly by bargaining for them in front of famous visitors. For the
final showdown on their behalf, Beck produced a unique legal challenge. It
was calculated to move the city, its prosecutor and the Mayor towards a resolution.

“It
is perhaps ironic,” writes Jonathan Dembo, “that despite its … small size
and weakness, it was Seattle’s Laundry and Dye Wagon Drivers Local 566 that
produced Dave Beck, the most powerful and dynamic leader in Teamster’s history.”[132]
Ironic, perhaps. But it was not just Local 566 which produced that David Beck.
It was the type of struggle waged every day in this red brick building in
the Regrade, first under D. C. Keeney, then under John C. Hagen. Both Keeney
and Hagen tried to crush their workers with the amassed force of the powerful
owners. Yet, thanks in part to the very persistence of their oppression, both
Beck and the laundry’s women learned how to win.

The
building’s David-versus-Goliath history continued to have repercussions. David
C. Keeney died on March 2, 1936, at 5:15 pm. The old laundry pioneer had lived
to be 78. Once he ruled Seattle Empire Laundry with an iron fist, aided by
those colleagues who helped him form the first “cartel.” But as his body lay
in state at 1702 Broadway, Seattle florists began to make telling deliveries.
From the family came a large “spray of daffodils and calendula”; from J. C.
Hagen, the lessor who had proved even more ruthless than Keeney, a respectful
“spray of deep red roses” arrived[133].
But messengers also delivered a small “spray of red roses” from the Associated
Laundries of Seattle.[134]
The “ALS” was all that remained of Keeney’s and Hagen’s cartels, whose power
had cast such a shadow over Bell and Western. Now, however, the sender was
head man William M. Short. Short ruled the Association ­ and the laundries
­ because of Dave Beck.[135]

The
building’s role in the fur trade: the Alaska Fur Company

A
series of changing names marked the decline of the old “cartel”: from the
Associated Laundries of Seattle, it became the Laundries and Dry Cleaners
Association and then, by the 1950’s, the Seattle Laundry and Dry Cleaning
Institute. In 1947, its chief ­ still William M. Short ­ passed away at the
age of 60. At his funeral, Beck and Hagen met once again; both were called
to serve as honorary pallbearers.[136]
Short was succeeded not by another Hagen, but by his son, William H. Short.
That son died in 1979, having for 32 years also served as head of the Pacific
Northwest Laundrymens’ Association.[137]

In
1951, the Alaskan Way Viaduct changed the city ­ and brought Seth Keeney economic
problems. For running the Viaduct across the front of his building, the City
of Seattle gave him $7,500 compensation. But the Empire Laundry found use
of their vehicles was impeded. So, on May 17, 1951, Keeney sold his property[138]
to James Branson Simpson ­ one of Seattle’s most celebrated and colorful characters.
Like Seth’s father David, Simpson was a pioneer. He was also a magnate in
the fur trade: in 1924, he had founded Seattle’s Arctic Fur Company. The Arctic
went on to become “the largest [furriers]
in the West.”[139] Simpson’s
ascension occurred in an era when Seattle’s fur market ­ a quintessential
Northwestern business ­ was the nation’s second largest.[140]
This was the age when Alaskan pelts linked the Northwest to Paris and Simpson’s
formula for success was “first-hand knowledge of all phases of the complex
fur business.”[141]

Simpson
was born in Fairhaven (now Bellingham). He was the youngest of seven children.
His mother Henrietta hired out as a cook and headed for the Klondike in 1888.
“J. B.” spent one year in a Tacoma children’s home. But he then joined his
mother in Bennett, Alaska ­ where she had established the town’s first bakery.
Later, J. B. worked as a newsboy in Dawson, until the family moved again to
San Francisco ­ just in time for its devastating earthquake.

The
teenage Simpson founded an “earthquake salvage” business ­ which, by the age
of 16, he sold for $31,000. “Three weeks later, I was broke,” he recalled
with embarrassment.[142]
The loss impelled him North to Seattle where he helped with building the Washington
Hotel and the Moore Theater. In 1919, “to collect on a bad debt,” Simpson
took half-interest in a Seattle fur store.[143]
In 1924, he opened the Arctic Fur Company, a shop at 1912 Third Avenue with
a 15-foot wide frontage. Only nine years later, Simpson’s hard work had born
rich fruit: “Today,” wrote the Seattle Times in 1929, “it [Arctic] has the largest manufacturing plant exclusively making furs
and the largest fur store on the Pacific Coast. The plant and store are in
the Securities Building, 1900 Third Avenue, only a few paces from the original
location.”[144]

Simpson
offers a stark contrast to the business views of Keeney and Hagen. Like Beck,
he was a “bottom-up” rather than a “top-down” boss. He began Arctic Fur with
“only a handful of employees” ­ and the ambition to retire at the age of 40.[145]
Simpson viewed his employees as colleagues, rather than as slaves. He figured
that, if they prospered, he would prosper with them. His views eerily foreshadowed
Seattle’s software industry. For not only did he run a profit-sharing scheme;
he also wooed his staff with company stock. Arctic salespeople worked on salaries,
instead of on commission. Company designers were sent on trips ‘back East,’
so that all designs would stay up-to-date. (These trips were all-expenses-paid
excursions and the designers’ salaries were paid during their absence.) Plus,
the stock options Simpson offered were considerable:

“Fifty
percent of the Arctic Fur Company’s net profits are divided among the employees
in the form of stock. The bonuses so distributed may be withdrawn in cash
at stated intervals, but except in rare instances, the employees are glad
to retain this stock, which yields handsome profits.

‘Give
a man an interest in the business and you will get from him something that
a salary will not buy,’ said Mr. Simpson. ‘Our profit sharing system may be
considered twenty years ahead of the times in some quarters, but we find it
pays.’”[146]

The
ravings over Simpson’s profits, too, have a modern ring:

“In
1925 he did a $10,000 business. This year, only a college generation later,
indications are that the volume will be a hundred times greater, or $1,000,000.
Imagine an institution increasing its output 10,000 per cent in such a short
period of time!”[147]

In
1929, the Arctic Fur Company was comprised of the “J. B. Simpson Fur Company”
and the “Seattle Arctic Raw Fur Company.” Together they dealt with all the
principal world markets. They managed two Seattle retail stores ­ as well
as establishments in Tacoma, Portland, Los Angeles, Reno, Beverly Hills and
San Francisco. By 40, Simpson had indeed achieved his declared ambition: officially,
he ceded control to his nephew Melville P. Steil (also raised in Alaska).
Actually, however, Simpson never retired. Instead, he became a powerful Chairman
of Arctic Fur’s Board of Directors.

In
1939 (the firm’s fifteenth year), Steil oversaw a $25,000 remodel of the old
Third Ave frontage.[148]
Company Vice President Frank P. English, Treasurer B. P. McNally, and Design
Manager John Willers were lauded as local leaders in a newspaper article bannered:
“THEY DIRECT DESTINIES.”[149]
By then, the Arctic had branches in eight Western cities.[150]

But
it was Simpson who always drove the business ­ the veteran spent time ensuring
destiny was directed his way. His favorite conduit for this was Senator Warren G. Magnuson,
with whom he developed an extremely persistent relationship. Letter after
letter was fired off from the Arctic Fur offices, engaging the Senator’s energies
with regard to upcoming contracts. Sometimes Simpson penned them himself;
other times, he merely directed the letters. Always, however, the inquiries
were pointed. Did Magnuson know about this deal? Could he influence that one?
Could he not be of help to his friends back West? It is clear from their correspondence
[a selection is appended] that Simpson
was an energetic inside trader. Sometimes, too, he got the information he
wanted. After all, Magnuson cared about his constituents.

One
of Simpson’s letters, from May 3, 1948, had huge repercussions for Keeney’s
red brick building. In it, Arthur L. Johnson asked ­ on Arctic Fur’s behalf
­ about a series of unit contracts for fur items issued by the U. S. Department
of Labor, Wage and Hour and Public Contracts Division. Johnson’s was, in essence,
a grievance letter: Arctic Fur was shocked that their name had not been on
the bidders’ list. This screed was followed on March 31, 1948, by one from
Bruce Bartley, one of Simpson’s lawyers. Bartley protested that no reply had
come from the War Department or Navy. His letter also contained this information:

“During
the war they [the Arctic Fur Company]
made various types of cold-weather clothing including gloves, mittens, parkas,
etc. at their plant here in Seattle. The plant is now closed, but could be
opened very easily”[151]

The
plant to which Bartley refers had been in the Securities Building.

On
January 17, Magnuson received pro-Arctic pressure from a different source:
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen &
Helpers. None other than Dave Beck was then its vice president and the letter
(dated January 17, 1949), came directly from his personal office. It stressed
that, although “Mr. Beck is in Chicago … were he here, I am sure he would
be writing you personally.” In Beck’s terms, the letter makes extremely clear,
the Arctic Fur Company had always been a friend:

“Mr.
J. B. Simpson of the Arctic Fur Company telephoned here today regarding the
Army contract for fur strips which he said he had discussed with you recently.
They are meeting with very strong opposition from the CIO fur organizations
in the East, the Seattle Fur Workers Union being the only one not under the
CIO.

Should
you be in a position to use your influence in behalf of Arctic’s desires for
the contract, and I can’t stress too strongly what it means to them, I am
positive Mr. Beck would be greatly pleased. They have always been most cooperative
when it has been their opportunity to do anything for us collectively or individually.”[152]

Whether
or not it was due to Beck’s intercession, Simpson received his War Department
orders. In May of 1951, after purchasing Keeney’s building, he started operating
it as a fur plant. Simpson’s new premises required little alteration, but
he did install a personal office on the top floor.[153] From there,
he would call in to direct operations, mostly fur contracts for the Korean
War.

By
the mid 1950’s, things were booming at the plant. Not only did Arctic Fur
profit from the military. An even stranger windfall made it unexpected millions
­ and brought it national fame, thanks to television and Disney.

2301
Western Avenue supplies the Davy Crockett craze

It
all began, in 1954, during the days after December 15-22, when ABC aired a
Disney program called “Davy Crockett, Indian Fighter.” This was the first
of a three-part series, filmed for the company’s Disneyland anthology (Disneyland was divided into stories intended
to fit four themes: Fantasyland, Tomorrowland, Adventureland and Frontierland).
By the time “Davy Crockett, Goes to Congress” was broadcast ­ on dates from
January 13-31 in 1955 ­ Disney’s slice of Frontierland had set off a national
craze.[154]

The
series’ final episode (“Davy Crockett, At the Alamo”) aired the week of February
23-28, 1955. By then, “Crockett mania” had caught both Disney and the country
by surprise. In one day, recalled the art director of Disney’s Character Merchandising
Division, “we received 200 calls … it was so busy the phones finally had to
be taken off the hook!” Over the next three months, Disney’s Merchandising
Division would be working 14-hour days, sometimes seven days a week ­ just
to keep up with demands for Crockett merchandise. These demands, in fact,
have never yet been equaled:

“In
May, 1955, Time estimated that in
the first three months of the craze alone, over $100,000,000 of Crockett merchandise
was sold. When it was over, an astronomical $300,000,000 in Crockett commodities
had been sold. Divide that by the thirty million consumers in the 5-14 age
group, and that works out to $10 per kid.

The
$300,000,000 (over $1.8 billion in 1996 dollars!!) was even more staggering
when compared to other crazes of the period. The previous Hopalong Cassidy
craze in 1950 and 1951, did a grand total of only about $1,000,000 in merchandise
sales a year. The Zorro craze created by Disney’s 1958-1959 TV series of the
same name, did slightly over $20,000,000 in merchandise sales.”[155]

The
Crockett craze was “the greatest merchandising sweep for any national craze,
before or after.”[156]
Even in 1990, well after ‘Star Wars,’ Entertainment Weekly still marveled
at its breadth ­ in a piece they headlined “The Biggest, Shortest Fad.”[157]

Crockett
mania was, by its nature, “rich in symbols,”[158]
foremost among which was the ubiquitous coonskin cap. The caps provided kids
with a cornerstone of kinship to “Davy.” “Raccoon tails, which before the
craze were selling for 25¢ a pound rose to $5 per pound by May 1955. The price
continued to rise as the demand increased and raccoon pelts became scarce.
When raccoon pelts became virtually non-existent, other animals were recruited.”[159]

The
man who had those animals (or, at least, their pelts) was none other than
J. B. Simpson. Within months of the Crockett craze, he devoted his Bell and
Western building to outfitting America’s Davys. “Seattle’s Arctic Fur Company,”
reported Time Magazine, “which has been shrewdly buying up wolf pelts for
years, is producing 5,000 ersatz coonskin hats daily.” In some stores, the
magazine noted, Davy Crockett garb accounted for 10% of all children’s wear.[160]

By
the summer of 1955, the coonskin cap was all-important. Its were spurred by
Davy Crockett gear of every type:

“Stores
in Los Angeles and Dallas have set up Crockett clubs, marked off special Davy
Crockett sections where youngsters can find everything from a Davy Crockett
peace pipe (98¢) to a complete Davy Crockett outfit with rifle, powder horn,
cap, etc. ($7.98); a Davy Crockett guitar costs $4.98 extra. Denver’s May
Co. advertises a Davy Crockett bath towel, with this pitch to mothers: ‘Your
bathtime struggles are over … They’ll run to use Davy Crockett towels.’”[161]

As
one Detroit retail buyer solemnly told Time, “Davy Crockett is bigger even
than Mickey Mouse.”

While
Simpson ran his “coonskin factory” at Bell and Western, Crockett mania swept
Seattle along with the rest of the nation. Allusions to Davy peppered every
part of life. IGA advertised the “Chance to Win a Davy Crockett Log Cabin
Playhouse”; the pioneer’s real-life grandson (a 55 year old accountant in
Dallas) told local paper readers how the craze had changed his life and, in
Spokane, an Indian “known as Davy Crockett” was profiled in detail. Even in
an article on suburbanites the subjects were classed as “kings of a new frontier”
(“Brave Suburbanites Are Today’s Davy Crocketts”).[162]

Perhaps
the most contentious local tie arose via an enterprising Ballard cinema owner,
Hall Baetz. Baetz remembered seeing an Edward Small film about Crockett; it
had been made five years earlier. Characterized in the local press as having
“unusual success with a series of art pictures … and wholesome programs for
children,” Baetz claimed to be “working closely with PTA groups in scheduling
children’s fare.” In fact, he located a print of Small’s ‘Davy Crockett, Indian
Scout’ from a distributor based in Utah. He then shopped it round to a set
of local theaters: The Burien, The American, The Ridgemont and the Sno-King
Drive-In. All agreed, with The Ballard, to form “a temporary Davy Crockett
circuit.” It enabled them to cash in on the forthcoming Disney film, prints
of which would not reach Seattle for weeks.[163]

The
Disney film, ‘Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier’ was composed of the
earlier television episodes. Although it had been seen before, ‘King’ would
still gross Disney $2.5 million. The action of Baetz and his compatriots sparked
a huge controversy in Seattle. Seattle Times critic Louis R. Guzzo discreetly
avoided taking sides. But other theater folk, like William H. Thedford (president
of Evergreen Theaters), and Fred Danz (executive vice president of Sterling
Theaters) were emphatically damning. They called the five year-old film “ancient,”
and claimed screening it “hurts the exhibitor.”

“‘One
of the most shabby practices among movie-theater owners is being displayed
these days in their advertisements for ancient, Grade-Z cinema regarding the
life and times of Davy Crockett, or the ‘son’ of Davy Crockett.

‘Do
not be misled. These films have absolutely nothing to do with the Davy Crockett
this generation’s children have become addicted to. Fess Parker, the man Walt
Disney dredged up to play the noble Crockett for his television show, has
not made movies for anyone other than Disney. A full-length film will evolve
from the TV series, but it has not been issued yet and no one need expect
anything similar in the currently advertised pictures.[164]’”

With
him in spirit were angry Seattle parents, dragged to the film by children
who were both puzzled and disappointed. (“There was none of the now-familiar
music,” one parent wrote the Times.) The hullabaloo raged for weeks over ‘Indian
Scout.’ But the participating theaters plugged it unrepentantly.[165]

Meanwhile,
Simpson’s coffers grew fuller and fuller, bolstered by the obsessive style
of Crockett fans. At the height of the craze, this was described by Life Magazine
as “having a sudden and shattering effect on the nation’s home life” ­ perhaps
because fans even wore their caps to bed.[166]

Yet
Crockett mania was more than merely a dollar phenomenon. “It was,” writes
critic Margaret King, “an important pop cultural event ­ because of its unexpected,
far-reaching impact on American life and because of what it reveals about
American values, ideals and aspirations.” King considers the ‘craze’ as more
than mere popular culture, and she places it “at the center of the image and
hero-making process … generating an elaborate, unpredictable interplay between
the media’s public figures and the mass audience.”[167]

A
role was played in the craze by the economic ‘boom’ of the 1950’s. But the
phenomenon occurred because of television:

“The
Crockett craze is considered by students of television to be one of the great
events of the television age, and they credit it with a social impact equal
to that of the Orson Welles “Invasion from Mars” broadcast or Roosevelt’s
Fireside Chats in radio history, in its power to produce ‘peak’ audience response,
especially among children.”[168]

“Disney
entered the field of television programming just as television had hit its
stride as a significant cultural activity, but before every household had
made its investment in a private receiver. Since sets still were shared between
friends and neighbors, especially among children, this situation gave a communal
impetus to the watching and then to the re-enacting of the Crockett drama
in the back lot or schoolyard, combining enthusiasm for television with a
large child audience forced to share that enthusiasm because of limited viewing
facilities. This communal setting was almost unique to the period of the craze
and doubtless provided the special matrix which helped touch off the phenomenon
and to produce its surprising success in a media situation which could not
later be duplicated.”[169]

The
Crockett phenomenon was indeed a complex affair. It came from a particular
social, economic, and political moment. Because of this, analyses of all its
aspects appeared in Time, the New York Times, Tide, the New Yorker, the Christian
Science Monitor, Saturday Review, Newsweek, Variety, TV Guide, Collier’s,
Harpers, the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Life ­ even the Congressional
Record. Almost every pundit in the country had a theory to offer, from William
H. Buckley (a staunch Crockett defender) to critic Brendon Sexton, Education
Director of the United Auto Workers. Strangely, the Communist Worker rallied
to Disney’s defense: “Its all in the democratic tradition and who said tradition
must be founded on 100% verified fact.”[170]

J.
B. Simpson must have agreed with the Communist Worker; his caps, after all,
were frankly imitations. But then, Simpson always made the best of any moment.
In March of 1959, when he was 67, he helmed Arctic Fur’s acquisition of the
Alaska Fur Company. Alaska had been founded in 1900 by Moritz Gutmann (a trader
“who had traveled by canoe with Indian guides, along the British Columbia
and Alaska coasts”[171]).
But Gutmann had named it the “Hudson Bay Fur Company.” The company’s name
was changed only in 1942, as settlement of a six-year court case waged by
the Governor & Company of Adventurers of England, who were “commonly known
as the Hudson’s Bay Company.”[172]

Never
fazed by the Alaskan Way Viaduct, Simpson promptly installed a billboard which
would face it. There, he trumpeted his company’s new name (Alaska-Arctic Furs)
to the oncoming traffic. And there, to this day, it remains: a commercial
billboard on the South facade. Simpson also told the press he was still active
at his plant, “directing … wholesale production and manufacturing.”[173]He also continued to dine off his Crockett
stories. Although the fad itself was played out by 1956, many in the city
remembered his strange fluke of fortune. He, too, recalled it when, eight
years later, he held court for journalist John J. Reddin. Reddin penned a
profile of Simpson’s varied career, conducting his interview in Simpson’s
Regrade office:

“In
the top floor loft of his four story brick building at Western Avenue and
Bell Street, James Branson Simpson, a wealth but leather-tough old sourdough,
is surrounded by timberwolves. Also the pelts of uncounted muskrats and wolverines.

Simpson,
73, is one of Seattle’s truly colorful personalities, a fabulously successful
fur speculator and owner of virtually every timber wolf pelt (plus most other
varieties of wolf pelts) in the United States today.

…
when the Davy Crockett craze hit the country and every youngster had to have
a Davy Crockett hat with a fur tail (and the price of unwanted fur tails suddenly
skyrocketed from 1 cent to almost $1), Simpson just happened to have more
than 2 million tails in storage, by far the biggest supply of Davy Crockett
tails in the country.”[174]

Even
on December 14, 1966, when a reader wrote the Seattle Times “Troubleshooter,”
asking “where to purchase a Davy Crockett hat,” she was told: “Alaska-Arctic
Furs is the place to go. Eleven years ago, when the fur-hat fad swept the
country, the choicest type was made by this Seattle firm, which controlled
90% of the world’s supply of wolf skins…the fad’s popularity was as brief
as it was spectacular. But the hats make a comeback at Christmas-time, which
is natural as they always have been a popular seasonal item. You may obtain
a wolfskin hat with a plastic crown for only $1.98. A fully-lined ‘Commando’
hat complete with ear-flaps and a timber-wolf tail, is available for $9.95.”[175]

•
In conclusion

Six
years later, J. B. Simpson died, willing his plant to Alaska-Arctic board
member Otto Johnson. With his sister Christine, Johnson managed it for three
more years. Then, he sold the property to Brodie Hotel Supply, Inc. The structure
would go forward to many other relationships ­ with the pioneering Lincoln
Arts Association, with a Shakespearean theater troupe, and with numerous Seattle
musicians and artists.

All,
however, have inhabited a space filled with history, an unchanged building
through which one encounters our past. Here are the heat of the laundries
and the chills once warmed by furs. Here, real secrets are hidden within the
huge beams and in the walls. The old laundry holds the ghosts of the women
who labored and struggled; of Dave Beck’s tread on the worn-out fir floorboards;
of the threat of a visit from Keeney or Hagen. And ­ do you really know your
“coonskin cap” wasn’t made here?

[10] McCallum,
John D., Dave Beck, Gordon Soules Book Publishers, 1978, p. 95; research
by William Mullenholz, Comptroller of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters,
quoted by McCallum on pp. 95-97.

[39] F. C. Kilbourne,
a leader among the owners felt “the laundry industry should not be compelled
to support those engaged in it. They should have an income from other sources.”
Seattle Union Record, August 26, 1916.

[50] “Strong Organization
Uses a Club On a Man Who Would Play Fair,” Seattle Union Record, June 30,
1917

[51]“A careful
investigation,” wrote the Seattle Union Record on July 7, 1917, “has disclosed
the fact that the prices received [by
the laundries] for laundry work in Seattle are higher than in any other
city on the Pacific Coast.”

[72] Certificate
covering amendment to the articles of incorporation of Seattle Empire Laundry
Company changing name to Broadway Empire Laundry Company (handwritten 28158,
stamped 1773241); Certificate covering amendment to the articles of incorporation
of Broadway Laundry Company changing name to Seattle Laundry Company (handwritten
28158, stamped 1773242)